Disclaimer: Ronin Warriors is not mine, but they have my love.
Warning: Yaoi. Het. Complicated interpersonal relationships.
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Persuasion – chapter three
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A long time ago:
There was a pond beneath a waterfall twenty minutes from the house where Mia lived. High school had been over for an eye blink, and they still had time to pretend that higher education wouldn't scatter them past the easy reach of bicycles or the occasional borrowed automobile. The days were still cool and Ryo had stared, a little horrified, at the skinny boy who had thrown open his door to announce the trip to the swimming hole.
The water was colder than the day ever would be, and when Rowen hesitated unexpectedly at dunking the shivering warrior of fire, Mia appeared from nowhere to do it for him. Rowen stared, shocked, while Kento hovered by his shoulder in shared "Whoa, man..." feeling. Cye vanished into the deepest water beneath the falls without bothering to flinch at icy mountain water, and Rowen watched him go, a little wistful for the grace his gawky body did not possess, on land or sea.
Kento pushed off towards the ripples around a laughing college girl and the slender, dark boy in her arms who was blinking water from eyelashes longer than her own. He swept a wave towards them with his thick hand. "Smells fishy," he said, nostrils flaring.
"It does," Sage agreed. He stared up at the falls, and Rowen knew he was impressed because he reached up to push back the pale hair in front of his right eye. Rowen grinned, leaning forward and sweeping his arms back like a bird or a performer in his last bow, breathing deeply and noisily.
"It smells like Cye!" he roared, and felt slick fish's hands close around his knees. The cold water closed over him suddenly, his nose burning with inhaled water.
He surfaced coughing and cursing with Cye growling in his ear like no fish ever could, "I don't smell fishy."
Rowen hacked up river water, promising him, "Of course you do," and managed a wet gasp before he went under again. Kento's fingers under his arm pulled him to the air again, holding Cye away with his other arm in an easy grip around his neck. Rowen latched weakly onto a leg like a boulder, bent up to his neck in waist-deep water, laughing in a soft wheeze until Cye slipped free. Rowen kicked back, dodging and reveling in the speed of his long body.
Above them, Lifeguards perched on tall chairs, watching visitors duck under buoys, the depths labeled in white paint on the rocks. Kento supposedly remembered a time when the small river had been without such public concerns for safety, but today there were children and parents and tanning parties on the grass. Rowen came up for air with Cye's arms around his waist, and gaped at the girl entering the water.
"Cye," he breathed, "look."
Cye turned, didn't choke him just yet. "At what?"
"That girl. She has utterly enormous breas..." Cye pushed him under, and his voice became silent bubbles of protest. Sage joined them, crossing the pool in slow, strong strokes of his arms.
"Can he breathe?" he asked mildly of the figure colored green by the water over his face. Cye shrugged, tossing his head to clear the dripping red bangs from his eyes, water beading on his red cheeks. Rowen kicked downwards, escaping Cye's hand into the green waters of the river bottom, and reappearing past Sage, pulling himself up the blonde's leg to freedom.
Grinning, he gasped, "Cye, you virgin."
Water-dark eyebrows lifted minutely, arms treading water slowly. "Are we starting a club?"
"Why?" Sage asked. Rowen's hands slid onto his shoulders, asking Sage to hold him up when there was no ground to hold Sage up himself. Shielded from the threat of a smaller boy with seaweed eyes, Rowen flicked a spray of tiny droplets towards the shore where a young woman in a coral suit flinched from the cold. High, nervous laughter echoed oddly across the water to the boys by the falls.
"That. Is that natural?" Sage's eyes slanted subtly towards Cye.
"Tits," Cye said acidly, and then blushed when Sage's pale face turned to his.
"Sage?" Rowen asked, resting his arms lightly over Sage's collarbone.
"Very astute, Rowen." Water lapped at his shoulders as Sage pushed his arms away, swimming towards the busty girl in the shallows. She lifted her hands to her mouth calling out, "Say-aage...!"
Rowen lunged forward, catching an ankle while ignoring the intolerant look aimed at him from gray eyes. "You have got to be kidding me!"
Sage sighed. "She used to come to the dojo. I'll be back." And then he was gone, Rowen staring after him and slowly sinking. He shut his eyes, fell slowly deeper, cold silence closing over his head.
Cye yanked him above the surface, snorting impatiently out his nose. "What now? Chest envy? There are hormones for that..."
"I just... kind of feel like a jackass." Cye's fingers tightened and loosened on his arm uncomfortably. He glanced back towards the shore.
"They were unusually large."
Something brightened in Rowen's face, his lips pulled back in a grin. "Weren't they?" Then he pushed off of Cye's body, tipping the other man beneath the water, diving for Ryo and Mia and Kento, where the big ronin watched their lithe landlord's ongoing seduction attempt with an equal mix of interest and boredom.
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Evenings were quieter in Mia's big house, the favorite hang out their parents didn't quite understand. Rowen lingered in the hallway, watched Ryo picking fingers through shoe laces, damp towel tossed over his shoulder. Mia smiled behind him, holding her yellow beach bag to her chest. Ryo's eyes flickered up to Rowen's face, pulling at him without meaning to.
There was something familiar at his back, and Rowen turned away from Ryo to follow Sage up the stairs, sliding a hand softly along to wall until his fingers found the light switch. Sage turned, pushing past a plain white door, and Rowen followed. There was the bookshelf they'd pulled from Mia's attic just for him, the one he'd filled so easily and hadn't quite managed to empty again. It'd stay behind probably, disorganized science fiction in a home he would leave to study science fact.
"Kento got a movie," he said, when Sage stopped at the bed.
"I know. It's probably horror."
"Yeah." Rowen pulled a book from the shelf, smiling. "Mia was annoyed last time, but I figure if we let her sit on the couch next to... ahem... someone, she won't mind as much."
The bed bent under Rowen's knees, book abandoned momentarily while he piled the pillows against the headboard. He fell back against them, flipping open the book he'd already read to a random page. He lifted his eyes, expecting to share a grin with a friend, but Sage's face was quiet, balking at some secret.
"I don't think Mia is going to have much luck."
"Why not?" Rowen grinned ridiculously. "I bet Ryo's pretty easy."
But Sage didn't smile or add a stupid comment of his own, hidden under habitual courtesy and a guiltless face. Instead he hesitated, touching a hand to the hair over his eye. It was an absent minded gesture, one Rowen was used to, though now it seemed out of place. He didn't understand what Sage had to be embarrassed about in Mia's house. "I don't think Ryo... likes girls very much."
"Uh."
"I don't," Sage explained, "know if it's something I should warn her about."
"Oh."
He watched Rowen impatiently until the archer pulled his expression into something like nonchalance, tried to sound uncaring. "I dunno. Maybe you're right, maybe you're not."
"What should I do?"
"I don't know. What does that mean anyway? 'Not liking girls'?"
Sage sighed. His head tilted slowly, the hair falling away. He watched the ceiling, white, expressionless, blank. "Are you frightened of going away?"
Rowen hesitated, a finger poised lightly in turning the page. The bed smelled like high school and the directionless, philosophical debates of teenagers. "I don't know," he said honestly.
"...I am. I think."
In the soft light of the setting sun, Sage's skin held an unnatural luminosity, trapped in the lines of his face, his hair, and in grey eyes reaching towards the edge of violet. Rowen lost the awareness of the book in his hands somewhere in the middle of indigo.
"I'll come back," he promised impulsively. "There's too much snow up north."
Sage closed his eyes, ducked his head. "Thank you."
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Music was playing over Mia's sound system, almost hiding the static of the television half-set up for a movie night. People were moving. Cye pushed his way into the kitchen. Sage left. Rowen sat on the stairs and watched Kento dash about, insisting on complete darkness for a night of self-imposed horror.
Then the house around him was empty, a quirk of probability. He stood, finding his way to the room where Mia was curled in a chair beneath a worn afghan. "Why not the couch?" he asked quietly so as not to wake the sleeper.
Her smile was wistful, watching Ryo asleep below Rowen's arms. "I'm not that silly."
His grin was cocky and shameless, slouching with his arms crossed on the back of the couch. "Not that much of a floozy, you mean? Eh?"
"You're a brat, Rowen Hashiba."
"What's wrong? You're not our mom."
"Sometimes I feel like it." She pulled the afghan tighter, flicking her eyes to the boy on the couch, and Rowen wondered why she was blushing now, after showing so little humility in the water.
"Come on," he said, going for a subtle leer, "I'd do it."
"Rowen," Mia whispered through her teeth, staring at him desperately. He bent dramatically across the back of the couch, and stopped, startled, by Ryo's open eyes watching him warily.
"Oy," he said. "Maybe not." Then suicidally, he ducked down and put his lips to Ryo's cheek because he'd said he would, feeling the heel of Ryo's palm hitting his chest even as he tasted skin. Mia shrieked and hid the girlish sound behind her hand.
His breath left explosively, leaving a hard sort of pain like a physical lump in his breast. He actually fell forward, over the front of the couch and on top of Ryo who was quickly scrambling upright and reaching for Rowen's shirt. Rowen opened his eyes, blinking at Ryo's face bent over him and lifting him up. He stared into the glare, realizing absently that Ryo hadn't said anything and that he really looked upset.
"Sorry," he managed. Ryo looked lost. Rowen pointed erratically towards the woman on the chair.
"Her," he gasped. "Needed… a demonstration." Ryo stared over his head, dazed. Rowen heard Mia stutter, fall into a sigh.
"Oh, it was..." She tossed her head, exasperated. "Oh, it was a joke, Ryo!" And she really was laughing. Rowen dropped his head against Ryo's stomach, closing his eyes and smiling. There was satisfaction in that smile, from icy water against his skin, from teasing Cye and a promise made to Sage. From Ryo's heat.
He felt hair on his face and opened his eyes to Ryo staring down at him, tired patience in the frown above his eyes and the accepting turn of his lips. Rowen laughed at him. Then he apologized again, knowing he didn't sound sincere, liking it that way. Mia was curled in her chair, lips pressed against her hands against the blanket over her knees, delight behind her smile.
Almost he did it again. He trusted Sage's judgment, after all, and why shouldn't it be him?